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Jacob Elet was a Dutch chief factor for the Dutch West India Company on the Slave Coast of West Africa during the 18th century who is especially known for having visited in 1733 Agaja, the king of Dahomey, and for having kept a diary chronicling the trip.
Jacob Elet was born in 's-Hertogenbosch at the end of the seventeenth or the beginning of the 18th century. In 1721 he traveled to the Gold Coast and was employed as an assistant of the Dutch West India Company in Elmina in present-day Ghana.
In September 1732 Elet was appointed chief factor and head of the Dutch fort Crevecoeur in Accra. When Agaja took three European employees of the company as hostage after an attack on Jakin on April 2, 1732, Elet was sent to the Agaja to negotiate their release and the resumption of the slave trade.
On February 10, 1733, Elet left Elmina and sailed to Jakin, where he left on his trip to Abomey, the capital of Dahomey, on March 20, 1733. He was accompanied on his trip by the head of the Portuguese trading post in Jakin, Antonio de Pinto Carneiro, by another four Europeans and by 84 African porters. Once they arrived, Elet managed to negotiate the release of his three colleagues in exchange for a resumption of the slave trade with the Dahomey at the port of Jakin. However, the latter part of the deal quickly fell apart because the bosses of the company in Amsterdam trusted very much one of their German Chief Merchants, Henry Hertogh, who was located in Appa (which was outside of Dahomey). The Dutch West India Company therefore continued to send all their ships, bar one, to Appa in order for them to be supplied with slaves. Elet knew that the Agaja would be angry at him and pleaded his bosses to send him ships, but to no avail. The Agaja was furious with Elet for not keeping his side of the bargain and destroyed the Dutch trading post in November 1734.
Upon Elet's arrival in Accra he got arrested and charged with embezzlement of funds in the reconstruction of the fort at Jakin and for keeping gifts of the Agaja to himself. The charges however could never be substantiated and Elet was repatriated to Holland in July 1740, after which nothing more is known about him.
The Kingdom of Dahomey was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. It developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by expanding south to conquer key cities like Whydah belonging to the Kingdom of Whydah on the Atlantic coast which granted it unhindered access to the tricontinental Atlantic Slave Trade.
Agaja was a king of the Kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, who ruled from 1718 until 1740. He came to the throne after his brother King Akaba. During his reign, Dahomey expanded significantly and took control of key trade routes for the Atlantic slave trade by conquering Allada (1724) and Whydah (1727). Wars with the powerful Oyo Empire to the east of Dahomey resulted in Agaja accepting tributary status to that empire and providing yearly gifts. After this, Agaja attempted to control the new territory of the kingdom of Dahomey through militarily suppressing revolts and creating administrative and ceremonial systems. Agaja died in 1740 after another war with the Oyo Empire and his son Tegbessou became the new king. Agaja is credited with creating many of the key government structures of Dahomey, including the Yovogan and the Mehu.
Kpengla was a King of the Kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, from 1774 until 1789. Kpengla followed his father Tegbessou to the throne and much of his administration was defined by the increasing Atlantic slave trade and regional rivalry over the profits from this trade. His attempts to control the slave trade generally failed, and when he died of smallpox in 1789, his son Agonglo came to the throne and ended many of his policies.
Ouidah or Whydah, and known locally as Glexwe, formerly the chief port of the Kingdom of Whydah, is a city on the coast of the Republic of Benin. The commune covers an area of 364 km2 (141 sq mi) and as of 2002 had a population of 76,555 people.
Elmina Castle was erected by the Portuguese in 1482 as Castelo de São Jorge da Mina, also known as Castelo da Mina or simply Mina, in present-day Elmina, Ghana, formerly the Gold Coast. It was the first trading post built on the Gulf of Guinea, and the oldest European building in existence south of the Sahara.
Cobra Verde is a 1987 German drama film directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski, in their fifth and final collaboration. Based upon Bruce Chatwin's 1980 novel The Viceroy of Ouidah, the film depicts the life of a fictional slave trader who travels to the West African kingdom of Dahomey. It was filmed on location in Ghana, Brazil, and Colombia.
The Dutch Gold Coast or Dutch Guinea, officially Dutch possessions on the Coast of Guinea was a portion of contemporary Ghana that was gradually colonized by the Dutch, beginning in 1612. The Dutch began trading in the area around 1598, joining the Portuguese which had a trading post there since the late 1400s. Eventually, the Dutch Gold Coast became the most important Dutch colony in West Africa after Fort Elmina was captured from the Portuguese in 1637, but fell into disarray after the abolition of the slave trade in the early 19th century. On 6 April 1872, the Dutch Gold Coast was, in accordance with the Anglo-Dutch Treaties of 1870–71, ceded to the United Kingdom.
The Portuguese Gold Coast was a Portuguese colony on the West African Gold Coast along the Gulf of Guinea. Established in 1482, the colony was officially incorporated into Dutch territory in 1642. From their seat of power at the fortress of São Jorge da Mina, the Portuguese commanded a vast internal slave trade, creating a slave network that would expand after the end of Portuguese colonialism in the region. The primary export of the colony was gold, which was obtained through barter with the local population. Portuguese presence along the Gold Coast increased seamanship and trade in the Gulf, introduced American crops into the African agricultural landscape, and made Portuguese an enduring language of trade in the area.
The Kingdom of Whydah ( known locally as; Glexwe / Glehoue, but also known and spelt in old literature as; Hueda, Whidah,Ajuda, Ouidah, Whidaw,Juida, and Juda was a kingdom on the coast of West Africa in what is now Benin. It was a major slave trading area which exported more than one million Africans to the United States, the Caribbean and Brazil before closing its trade in the 1860s. In 1700, it had a coastline of around 16 kilometres ; under King Haffon, this was expanded to 64 km, and stretching 40 km inland.
The Treaty of Axim was concluded between the Netherlands and the chiefs of Axim in the western region of the Gold Coast and signed at Fort St. Anthony near Axim on 17 February 1642. The treaty regulated the jurisdiction of the Netherlands and the Dutch West India Company in the town and polity of Axim after the Dutch West India Company had successfully attacked the Portuguese who were the occupants of Fort St. Anthony in the town. Over time, the agreement was in part superseded and replaced by new contracts and agreements. The treaty did remain the basis for Dutch jurisdiction and political relations between Axim and the Dutch until the latter left the Gold Coast in 1872.
A slave insurrection started on Sankt Jan in the Danish West Indies on November 23, 1733, when 150 African slaves from Akwamu, in present-day Ghana, revolted against the owners and managers of the island's plantations. Led by Breffu, an enslaved woman from Ghana, and lasting several months into August 1734, the slave rebellion was one of the earliest and longest slave revolts in the Americas. The Akwamu slaves captured the fort in Coral Bay and took control of most of the island. They intended to resume crop production under their own control.
Fort Nassau, near Moree, Ghana, was the first fort that the Dutch established on what would become the Dutch Gold Coast. Because of its importance during the early European colonial period in West Africa and its testimony to the African gold trade and the Atlantic slave trade, the fort was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1979.
The Dutch Slave Coast refers to the trading posts of the Dutch West India Company on the Slave Coast, which lie in contemporary Ghana, Benin, Togo, and Nigeria. The primary purpose of the trading post was to supply slaves for the Dutch colonies in the Americas. Dutch involvement on the Slave Coast started with the establishment of a trading post in Offra in 1660. Later, trade shifted to Ouidah, where the English and French also had a trading post. Political unrest caused the Dutch to abandon their trading post at Ouidah in 1725, now moving to Jaquim, at which place they built Fort Zeelandia. By 1760, the Dutch had abandoned their last trading post in the region.
Jan Niezer (1756–1822) was a famous and influential Euro-African trader in the Dutch Gold Coast. In his day and age, he was the richest Mulatto trader on the Gold Coast. Furthermore, Niezer was an important political figure during the Ashanti wars of the early 19th century. His most important trade interest was the Atlantic slave trade, until it was abolished by the Netherlands in 1814.
Jan Pieter Theodoor Huydecoper was an administrator of the Dutch West India Company. He served as Director-General of the Dutch Gold Coast between 1759 and 1760 and from 1764 until his death in 1767.
The History of the Kingdom of Dahomey spans 400 years from around 1600 until 1904 with the rise of the Kingdom of Dahomey as a major power on the Atlantic coast of modern-day Benin until French conquest. The kingdom became a major regional power in the 1720s when it conquered the coastal kingdoms of Allada and Whydah. With control over these key coastal cities, Dahomey became a major center in the Atlantic Slave Trade until 1852 when the British imposed a naval blockade to stop the trade. War with the French began in 1892 and the French took over the Kingdom of Dahomey in 1894. The throne was vacated by the French in 1900, but the royal families and key administrative positions of the administration continued to have a large impact in the politics of the French administration and the post-independence Republic of Dahomey, renamed Benin in 1975. Historiography of the kingdom has had a significant impact on work far beyond African history and the history of the kingdom forms the backdrop for a number of novels and plays.
Jan Pranger was a Dutch merchant, slave trader and colonial administrator who served as the Director-General of the Dutch Gold Coast from 1730 to 1734. A portrait of him along with an enslaved servant by Dutch artist Frans van der Mijn in on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
The Beeckestijn was an 18th-century Dutch slave ship working out of Amsterdam. She is depicted in front of the Dutch West India Company warehouses on the Prins Hendrikkade quay by the engraver Hendrik de Leth.
The documented history of Elmina begins in 1482 with an agreement between the Portuguese navigator Diogo de Azambuja and the ruler of Elmina, called Caramansa by the Portuguese. In it, the Portuguese were allowed to build the first European fortress in sub-Saharan Africa. For the next 150 years until the conquest by the Dutch in 1637, Elmina was the capital of the Portuguese bases on the Gold Coast, then for about 250 years the capital of the Dutch Empire in West Africa. Since the capture of the lease for the two fortresses of Elmina by the Ashanti in 1701, the city was also important to the Ashanti Empire. Until the 19th century, Elmina was one of the most populous cities in the Gold Coast, surpassing Accra and Kumasi. The trade in gold, slaves and palm oil brought the city into direct contact with Europe, North America, Brazil and, through the recruitment of soldiers, also with Southeast Asia. It was not until the takeover and destruction of the city by the British in 1873 that Elmina lost its prominent position in the Gold Coast.